Saturday, April 18, 2009

Madeleine has had a hard time finding an activity she likes over the years. Honestly, I haven't too much cared if she ever found one; staying home and playing with friends is just as easy as running out to some sort of lesson or another. And growing up I never really took any sorts of lessons. We jut weren't close enough to make a weekly commitment very feasible.

But Madeleine has dabbled. She tried ballet. Gymnastics. And most recently ice-skating and horseback riding. The ice-skating she still enjoys, but the horseback riding she loves. She can be in the middle of the most fun game imaginable with her block friends and when I tell her it's time to leave for her riding lesson she immediately says good-bye and runs in to prepare herself. She wants to get to the stables early each week because she wants to learn more than just how to ride a horse, she wants to learn how to care for them also.

This is not an activity that is going to fall by the wayside anytime soon.

Madeleine cleaning out one of her favorite horses' hooves with a hoof pick.

I will have to look into the WFB code to see if I can keep a horse in the garage. Shouldn’t be hard to convert the garage in to stable. We already have the barn cats. We can till up all the land in the K-T compound to grow hay. (no more mowing the lawn!). We can also plant some hay on the 40 where the Olson boys hunt – I figure that is a total of that is about 18-20 tillable acres. Based on about 5 minutes of research, a horse eats about 15 lbs of hay a day or 5,348 lbs a year. The average square bale is about 60 lbs. Yield is about 200 bales per acre (assuming three crops, which is standard for the land I am thinking of). That gives us far more hay than is needed: 3,600 bales or about 216,000 lbs. Figure in storage to allow for crop rotation every couple of years and we should be able to feed the horse and sell some of the hay to keep costs down.

I suppose we’ll have to buy some grain (although not much) and some straw for bedding. Might as well get a cow too!